Open Garden hardware built around ATtiny84 MCU

Cooking Hacks, the the open hardware division of Libelium, has debuted a new Open Garden hardware platform.

Powered by Atmel’s ATtiny84 microcontroller (MCU), the platform consists of three separate kits equipped with sensors to maintain healthy growth, whether plants are located indoors or outside.

“All kits measure parameters such as temperature, humidity and light; soil moisture is monitored in the Indoor and Outdoor kits; water sensors such as pH, conductivity and temperature are added to the Hydroponics kits,” David Bordonada, Manager of Libelium’s Open Hardware division, explained.

“The Open Garden platform works with various types of actuators that can modify the state of the plants, by irrigating them with droppers or sprinklers or activating lights and oxygen pumps. The sensor nodes periodically send information to an Internet Gateway by using available wireless interfaces such as Wi-Fi, GPRS and 3G.”

According to Bordonada, an open-source web application stores data, allowing users to easily access relevant information from a browser or iPhone/Android app.

The system – compatible with both U.S. (110V) and Europe (220V) power requirements – will be showcased at Maker Faire Bay Area, May 17-18, 2014, at booth 231.

“Open Garden helps you get started with plant projects that range from beginner gardens to fully automated watering systems with grow lights,” added Bordonada.

“Now it’s easy to run your garden with microprocessors and a suite of sensors to monitor your plants and make sure they get optimal care.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the official Open Garden page here. Readers may also want to browse through some of our previous articles on open source agriculture, including “The Internet of Things, Stalk by Stalk,” “Smart Urban Aquaponics in West Oakland,” “DIY Farming with Atmel and Arduino,” “Open Source Aquaponics with APDuino,” Agricultural Monitoring with Atmel AVR
,” “Arduino-Based Farming in Maine” and “Building a DIY Moisture Monitor.“

A closer look at Atmel’s Xplained kits

Earlier this summer, Bits & Pieces took readers on a brief virtual tour of Atmel’s Xplained Pro kits. Today, we want to familiarize our readers with Atmel’s Xplained evaluation kits for our extensive lineup of 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs).

“Essentially, Atmel’s Xplained lineup consists of a series of low-cost MCU boards to help devs evaluate and demonstrate product features and capabilities for different Atmel microcontroller families,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces. “In addition, a rich selection of example projects and code drivers are provided in Atmel Studio, while code functionality is easily added by pulling in additional drivers and libraries from the Atmel Software Framework.

The Atmel Xplained series also includes a range of add-on boards that can be stacked on top of the MCU boards to create platforms for specific application development. This means a wide range of add-on boards is available, including inertial pressure and temperature sensors, ZigBee RF and Cryptographic authentication.

However, it should be noted that due to difference in features such as pin count or memory size, some add-on boards may not work with all MCU boards, so be sure to look at the the table below which summarizes recommended combinations.

On the X/MEGA side, Xplained kits include the XMEGA-E5 (ATxmega32E5) , XMEGA-C3 (ATxmega384C3), XMEGA-A3BU (ATxmega256A3BU), MEGA-1284P (ATmega1284), XMEGA-A1 (ATxmega128A1) and the XMEGA-B1 (ATxmega128B1 and LCD controller).

Additional Xplained kits include the UC3-A3 (AT32UC3A3256), the SAM4S (SAM4S ARM Cortex-M4), CryptoAuthentication add-on (ATSHA204) , UC3-L0 (picoPower AT32UC3L064), Temperature Sensor Xplained (add-on) and the Sensors Xplained (add-on).